All Who Wander
by chezchuckles
Summary: Everything That Glitters 3. A Dash Universe story with adult Ellery. "All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost." -Tolkien
1. Chapter 1

**All Who Wander:  
A Dash Universe, Ellery Companion**

* * *

_For Jamie:  
Welcome to the World, Ellery Maye_

* * *

All that is gold does not glitter,  
Not all those who wander are lost;  
The old that is strong does not wither,  
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,  
A light from the shadows shall spring;  
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,  
The crownless again shall be king."

― J.R.R. Tolkien, _The Fellowship of the Ring_

* * *

Kate gathers her hair up with both hands, turning her head side to side to finger-comb through the bumps until she can wrap a rubber band around it. The mirror reflects the mature woman she's managed to carefully piece together after years of growth and grief, love and labor, this woman aged like-

"Fine wine," Castle murmurs from beside her, lifting an eyebrow at her. "And you were never one to sigh into the mirror, Kate. Don't start now just because of a few grays."

"A few?" she mutters. "I'm going every four weeks to get touch-ups because it is all over."

He's smirking. She narrows her eyes at him in the mirror, but he only winds an arm around her waist and messily kisses her throat. Her throat, and her pulse shivers like a newborn colt under his lips, just at the touch.

"Mm, what's that for?" she whispers. He's been - whatever this is - breaking their routines or getting them out of their usual ruts - and she likes it. Kissing her throat? Well, not that he never, only that he doesn't usually start with throat-kissing until his hands are well on their way. But it's a quite nice short circuit straight to flustered.

"Just for you, for fun, because now at least you're half as gray as I am," he rumbles. That voice just - it's only grown deeper over the years, lowering, and she thrills at that too.

"Half as gray," she sighs. "But men are only more distinguished, while women just get old."

"Hey, now," he says, catching her hip. "That's my wife you're maligning."

"You might want to trade me in for the newer model."

"It's never funny, Kate," he says.

She jerks her head up at the serious tone, her mouth dropping open in surprise. "Rick," she says, smoothing her hand over his bicep. "I didn't mean it like that. A joke." Feeble as it sounds now, she knows he's always been sensitive about having two wives ahead of her - his 'forever wife.'

Sweet man, there's no need. Long time done.

He nods, a slowly bobbing in his throat. "I know. I know that." A cheerful smile quickly pasted over the hurt. She did that to him, and now she feels resigned.

Just _tired_. They start out with the best of intentions, and this is how it goes. Live long enough with someone, and you know how to push every button, and you fall into the same emotional traps.

It's a rut, right? _So go for the throat, Kate_.

"Hey, you, listen up," she says, snagging his hand. She takes the toothbrush from him, puts it back in the holder.

He's paying attention now.

She laces their fingers together and drags him out of the bathroom, towards the big bed. "You are my husband, and no one else's, ever. No one can have you but me."

He blinks, looks sweetly, adorably confused.

Go for the throat. She pushes on his chest and he doesn't really fall, but he does stumble a little. She uses what she can and slings her arms around his neck, wishes she could jump his bones.

What the hell. Only live once.

She jumps and Castle squeaks, but he grabs her by the thighs - ouch, that will bruise - and he does manage to catch her, only to sit down hard on the bed.

Perfect. No one broke a hip.

She leans in and paints his throat with her tongue, feels him swallow and breathe, feels him clutching at her thighs and dragging his hands up and in and _oh-_

Yes, that will do quite nicely. "No one can have you but me," she reminds him. "Partners - in all the ways."

"You're so very hot," he grunts at her mouth.

She laughs, light as air, bubbles floating up her chest and out. "Prove it."

"No problem," he growls, and suddenly he's flipped her, all of his weight pressing her open and into the mattress and she rolls her hips, flushed and already - already - willing in flesh as much as spirit.

"Faster," she hums, and then laughs as she says a phrase she hasn't said in years. "Before the kids come looking for us."

* * *

She didn't actually expect her adult children to come find them in the night, no. It was a joke.

Except she feels a bleary sense of maternal instinct tugging at her, and she opens her eyes in the darkness to find a pale round face at the edge of the mattress.

And her husband pressed hot and too-close at her back.

She clears her throat of sleep and croaks, "Ella?"

"I couldn't sleep."

"I could. I _was_," she groans. Castle groans in sympathy but he rolls off and onto his side of the bed, cuddling the covers, leaving her mostly bare but for the sheet tangled at her ankles. Good thing she snagged his t-shirt before passing out.

"Sorry," Ella whispers, standing. "Never mind. Go back to sleep. I - oh, gross, Daddy is naked."

Kate grunts and closes her eyes, but then she has to look, just to see the damage. She turns her head and Castle is on his side, his bare bottom hanging out from the edge of the covers.

She can't help giggling - call it sleep depravation, call it leftover bliss, whatever. She giggles, and Ellery, from behind her fingers, peeks out to look at her.

"It's not funny. I need _advice_ and Daddy is _naked_ and you're-"

"I am here for advice from the hours of five a.m. to nearly midnight, Ellery Castle. And I think that's pretty generous."

"Oh."

And then Kate hears herself - or how it might sound to a girl who has been running away from her family for all of her young adult life.

She sits up, hair falling around her shoulders, blinking up at her daughter even as she sees Ellery's face close off, shut down, pull up stakes. She used to do that - heck, she sometimes _still _does it.

She glances at the clock, presses her lips in a line. But Ellery is back from California with her boyfriend - fiance - fiance, they're as engaged as Dash and Shan, and obviously Ella needs her mother.

Kate didn't have her mother to ask, to beg, to wake at three in the morning with ridiculous fears - or real ones.

She holds out both hands. "Help me up. I think I'd break my neck tangled in the sheets."

Ellery does, even though she must see it for what it is, flimsy excuse, thin pretense so that Kate can follow it up with an embrace, maintaining contact. Ella's thin shoulders are wiry with muscle beneath her soft sleep shirt, and she smells like California even though she's been in New York two weeks.

"Go on out to the living room, cricket. Be right there."

She releases her daughter and moves back to the bed, carefully drags the covers up over her husband, unable to help running her fingers through his hair and placing a soft kiss at the shell of his ear. He twitches but doesn't wake and she smooths her fingers over the stubble on his jaw. When Kate turns, Ellery is standing in the doorway, an indistinct shadow, watching her.

Well, let her. This is what love can be.

Kate opens the bureau and finds underwear and a pair of Castle's ratty boxers - he hates that she keeps them. _Just buy new ones_. But they smell like laundry and their home and they're always soft and worn. She slides them on under her shirt and she sees Ellery blushing now and heading quickly down the hall to give Kate privacy.

Little late for that. Kate chuckles under her breath and finds her way towards the living room, her daughter's faint path somehow illuminated as if the girl gives off a glow in her wake.

Ella has that purple elephant in her fingers, stroking it as she sits on the couch in clear invitation. Kate wonders if this will be a short conversation, another of Ella's confessions, or an all-night kind of thing. Maybe she should make coffee - oh, but right, her daughter won't drink the caffeine.

Darn. She could use it herself, but no need to start off on the wrong foot, with a wall between them.

Kate sinks down onto the couch and lays her hand over Ella's fidgeting. She's torturing that purple elephant, turning it around and around, but she stops after a moment with the weight of Kate's hands on hers.

"I'm stealing stuff again," Ellery blurts out. And then shame flushes her face and she groans, her head tilting back to the couch. "No, actually - I never stopped. I don't know."

"Stealing or taking, Ella?"

"Taking," she sighs. "It's not from stores or people's homes. It's from you guys. And mostly Nick."

Kate tries to hide her smile, keeping it secret, but Ellery has always been sensitive to feeling laughed at or maligned, so she knows anyway. And huffs at her mother for the amusement.

For a moment, it's simply that: a shared acknowledgment of a decade spent finding things in random places and Ellery's avid refusal to admit to the taking. Kate figures some of this is her fault, since her daughter's quick fingers and sly designs made Kate proud in her secret heart, proud to be wanted so fiercely that Ella invented ways to gain her attention.

Her daughter was hungry for her, and Kate found that so appealing.

In some ways, Castle did the same thing to Kate. Turned all of his considerable focus and intelligence on wooing her, chasing after her, and so perhaps Kate responded to that in his daughter.

She releases Ella's hand and sits back to watch the girl lay the elephant down on the coffee table. She stole it once, long ago, hid it so that only recently has Kate found it again. She's not sure why this has manifested itself now, but it seems to have been the impetus for some healing conversations lately.

Kate finds herself caressing the unmarred skin of her inside wrist, not sure why these scars of love should appear to her now, on the couch in the dark after nearly thirty years. She can barely even see them.

"Does Nick know you take things from him?" Kate asks softly.

"Probably he does," Ellery sighs. "How can he not?"

"What have you made off with, _mala svraka_?" Her little magpie is right.

"Just - things I can't help wanting so badly. Pieces of him. One of his big sweaters that he wears in the winter over his wetsuit before he goes out. It smells like salt and too-early morning and his skin."

Kate shivers, the intensity of her daughter's love on display in a few words, feeling it almost as Ella feels it. She has her father's power of words, when she chooses to speak. "Oh? Do you wear it?"

"No," she whispers. "I hide it. I always hide."

"Like me," Kate sighs back. "In our nature."

"A sweatshirt is one thing," Ella says, shaking her head. She has curled her knees up to her chest, arms clasped around them. "But other things - and he doesn't ask for them back. He even bought me a package of his t-shirts, being a punk, but I gave them back. And I took the ones he's worn out."

Like Kate with Castle's boxers. "Well, at least he understands?"

"One of his - he has this - or had, I took it, and it's mine and I can't give it back - this white bead on a leather strap. He calls it his prayer bead. He used to wear it doing a stunt or surfing. Protection, like a saint. Wore it all the time. It's the kind where you can tighten it, adjust the leather knots? So one night after-" Ellery falls off abruptly, as if horror has caught her throat.

Kate laughs. "You just saw your dad and me-"

"Oh, _gross_, Mama-"

"And you and Nick are staying upstairs in your old room until you find your own place, so don't think I don't know what _one night after_ means, Ellery Kate."

Her daughter grunts. "Right. Well. It was - our first night after," Ella says pridefully now, as if daring Kate to protest too much information. She doesn't, and Ellery sighs and keeps going. "He had it around his neck and I saw it and reached out and loosened it while he slept. Took me hours because it was tight with salt and years and... I lifted it over his head and put it over mine. I wore it all night and... kept it."

"Yeah?" Kate whispers. The darkness makes it easier to share. Even for her, having the darkness wrapped around them makes it easier to know this grown-up version of her daughter.

"I left it loose, and it hung down between my breasts - under my shirt, hidden like that - and I would wear it every time I did a stunt or anything at all, really. I could feel that white bead. It was always warm, and I imagined it still held his heat, the heat of his skin, but I'm sure it was just my own."

"You wearing it now?"

Ella lets out a breath, laughing a little. "No. I was yesterday. I wasn't even wearing the ring, but I wore that. He saw it on me when we went to bed and said nothing at all. Mom, why am I stealing things - taking - from people I just want to love me back?"

Kate hears all the broken _need_ in her daughter's voice and of course she drags the girl into an embrace, wishing she could erase years of feeling not-at-home in her own home. But that's impossible. Kate's the same, and she has wrestled with her own versions of that displacement and abandonment, all unearned really, lies her heart told her.

At least Ellery still has her mother, while Kate's mother was taken from her before she could do anything like this - know, understand, feel at ease in her own skin again. She has no pattern for how to mother a girl just like herself, and she has to pray that _trying_ will help at all.

There but for the grace of God...

"I think it's just that, baby girl," she murmurs into her daughter's ear. "When you took that elephant, I knew it was because you wanted me to love you more. A kind of test, to say _prove it._"

"Mama, I knew you loved me. Not _more_, I knew-"

"And I do love you, with everything, all the ways, cricket. Maybe I couldn't ever figure out how to show it. Or how to show you how much more it was than even you could want or need or could hold in your lifetime."

"I didn't mean to make you feel-"

"Listen," Kate says, making up her mind right there on the spot.

She's had little sleep and it's still full dark, but there is a reason she's been thinking about her scars these days, those slivers of silver tracing her body where it all - herself and Castle and what they were - where it got put right even as it was broken.

"Listen, I need to tell you about me," Kate says firmly. "Maybe it will help you know about you."


	2. Chapter 2

**All Who Wander**

* * *

"What?" Ella startles.

Her daughter jerks back, that instinctive tug to put herself out of harm's way, emotional harm.

Kate is old friends with that reflex, and it makes her throat thick with grief. This is her daughter, who must learn those mistakes on her own, no matter how much Kate would like to spare her the ache of that kind of loneliness, the ache of constant retreat.

She hasn't saved her daughter any grief, even though she's tried - she handled Ellery with such care, and giving her over to her father because at least Castle knows how to love a Beckett woman, how to cajole her forward, how to reach her. But it hasn't saved Ellery.

Maybe Kate can - maybe things aren't too late - maybe a mother can always reach her daughter. Ellery still feels that compulsion to withdraw herself from something that she thinks isn't made for her, and Kate never wanted her daughter to feel that, fell it like Kate herself did.

There's still time, and maybe they both need some clarity and understanding of their past.

So Kate gives herself a moment to find the beginning, and then she tells her story. "When my mom was murdered-"

Ellery shivers, and Kate pauses, immediately unsure. It won't get better than this; this is the mild part.

But Ella shakes her head, putting her chin on top of her knees. "I forget, you know? That she was _murdered_." The girl closes her eyes. "My grandmother was murdered. Your _mom._"

As if knowing it for the first time.

"Yes," Kate says, frowning. This is all she has, the stories and experiences of a lifetime - or at least an adulthood - spent protecting herself as Ellery does, spent on the outside looking in. "I was nineteen, younger than you, and it felt like I had been retroactively orphaned. Maybe that doesn't make sense. But the violence of it, the way she was _taken_ from me. Her death cut me off from the rest of the world. I was alone."

Ella lifts her head. "But Papa."

Kate has to be so careful; she won't expose old wounds that have long since healed, sins long forgiven. "Papa didn't grieve the way - the way I wanted him to. And I'm going to sound like a brat, and cold-hearted to you, I know, but Papa wasn't what I wanted him to be for me. On top of it, I couldn't imagine anyone else feeling grief like I did, no one could possibly understand what it was to be the daughter of a murder victim, and so I - was orphaned. I was abandoned, and it felt like I had been abandoned for all of my life, even though I had all that love for nineteen years. It got erased."

No point talking about her father's alcoholism, about the very real ways he orphaned her, because she isn't orphaned now. And it's gone, and that's a story a man should share if he feels his granddaughter needs to know.

"Abandoned," Ella echoes. "Orphaned - that's rough, Mama. But I know..."

But she knows the feeling? Oh, God, just the thought of that being true grieves Kate. She must have made so many mistakes, and yet even now she doesn't know how she could have done it differently.

Well, she's starting here, starting now.

"Yes. Abandoned by my mother, even though it wasn't her fault. I let that violence and injustice rob me of her. So that it felt like abandonment, it felt like I had no family, that I was alone in the world. Papa and I weren't talking, and I threw myself into the Police Academy and vaulted myself to detective because I didn't have anything else. Work was life."

"And then you met Dad and you had all of us."

_All of us. _Like there is such a large brood. Well, there is. Kate laughs at her daughter's simple fairy tale ending. It snuffs out all the heartbreak, all the trauma and tragedy and - and loneliness.

Loneliness her daughter aches with, as if that orphan-hood is the only legacy Kate managed to give her, transmitted in utero somehow. Ellery is taking things from people again because she _needs_, and Kate has to find a way to give. She knows it has to be her.

"I have a story about me, about myself, that I want to tell you - but you can't tell your brother. Dashiell has his own stories, and I've told them to him, and this one is for you. He wouldn't be able to - let go of it."

"Mom, you sound a little - scary." Ella gives a soft laugh.

"It's a scary story," she admits, settling back in the couch. She puts her hands in her lap, but she feels shaky with knowing she has to find words for what's happened.

What happened. It's not _current_. It's not something that can spring up on them suddenly; it's old news, water under the bridge.

"When I was - when I was alone," she starts, finding it surprising that she never would have thought of calling it that before. "Single, working as a detective, your father was shadowing me-"

"I know, Mom," Ella says quickly, rolling her eyes. "We all know the stories."

"Well, you don't, actually. You know the carefully edited versions we came up with for you guys, so you wouldn't be afraid for me when I left for work in the morning."

Well, that shocks Ellery into silence - and out of her dismissive eye-rolling. At least Beckett can still do it, grab her daughter's attention.

She smiles to herself in the darkness, glancing towards the windows for the crowded night beyond. "We did a lot of crazy things, a lot of scary and dangerous things, your dad and I. Castle." His name feels strange in her mouth when she's talking to their own daughter, a thrill and a secret, something she's getting away with. "There was a nuclear bomb once that was about to go off - right in front of us - and so he grabbed my hand-" She mimed it for her daughter, just as she's told and retold this story. "And he got that stubborn look on his face, determined, and then he reached out, took hold of all the wires, and he yanked."

Ellery startles when Kate says it. "You are not serious."

She grins. "Serious. Saved our lives. Whole city. And once when my apartment blew up-"

"Your _what_?"

"Yeah," Kate laughs, a little shocked herself. "Castle figured it out a second before it blew - with me inside. He called me to warn me, so I jumped in the bath tub - I had just gotten out of the shower - and _boom_. Rattled me so hard I could barely move. Castle came busting down the door, everything on fire and smoking, and he took off his coat for me and closed his eyes and turned around-"

"You guys weren't - together?"

"No, baby. We weren't together." She smiles to herself now, another secret smile, all her own, for the ways they were and weren't together. "He was right with me. Always in on things. Never failed to show up. But I never got it - I never understood that he was serious about - well, about forever. Sometimes you think you're alone, and not in a bad way, but just that you are all there is. Castle was this famous writer who annoyed me and then who managed to come up with some good ideas, so I began to want him around but - not in my life."

"Not in your life," Ella sighs. A little lonesome sounding, lonesome for her father? Or for the times when she was a child, maybe.

"I couldn't see how _he_ related to me at all. Being friends wasn't being - well, _in_ my life. Not to me - we were such different worlds. I don't know, maybe you don't get-"

"Oh, I do," Ellery says clearly, flopping back to the couch. "It's one of the things we fight about. _You don't tell me things_. I forget to speak, forget to tell. It just doesn't come up to say. So I don't remember to tell Nick that I'm meeting friends for lunch, or I might quit my job, or - or - or I want to get married."

Kate sighs. "Yeah. I'm the same as you, kiddo. A personality thing. It's not bad, it's just not very helpful in a marriage. And when Nick hears from you that it just didn't come up, he hears, _You're not important enough to me to remember._"

"Ouch." Ellery sinks her face into her raised knees.

"I'll find a way for your dad and Nick to talk to each other," she muses, rubbing at her daughter's foot. "They can compare notes."

"Oh, no. Mom-"

"In a good way," she laughs, taking Ella's ankle and squeezing. "Promise. For the good. They can commiserate about the Beckett women."

Ellery gives a faint sliver of a smile on her face. "Beckett women, huh? Thought I was a Castle."

"Oh, baby girl, I'm sorry to tell you - you're a Beckett." Kate reaches up to stroke the hair off her daughter's face and Ella flinches before settling into the touch.

Definitely a Beckett. And of course, doesn't saying it just reaffirm all the wrong messages that Kate has been sending her daughter so inadvertently? _You're not one of us_. She never meant for that to be what her daughter heard.

"Do you want to hear my scariest story?" Kate says then, still stroking her daughter's hair. "Because, _mala svraka_, I think you'll understand what it means to women like us when we - find a partner, find our - um, well, one and done. What it means to have that forever."

Ellery turns her head slightly to look at her mother, but not so much that she brushes off Kate's touch. "Yeah. Your scariest story."

"This is about what happened to me and your dad. Castle. What happened to me so that I finally figured it out."

"A murder case? Figured out a-"

"No, not a case. Figured out my whole life? Or well, what my whole life was up until that point. And how it had changed without my even seeing it."

"You're very cryptic, Mom. Worse than Daddy."

She chuckles. "Well, we've settled into each other over the years. I'll end up using his words, and he'll use mine, and our mannerisms blend so that we don't know whose it was in the beginning."

"Dad rolls his eyes almost as good as you do."

Kate grins, stroking back Ella's hair. Her touch might do as much as her words, she realizes, and so even if telling this story is a terrible idea, their time together like this might be worth it. "Well, this was a case of ours, a serial killer. He maimed his victims and watched them bleed to death. He was called the Butcher."

"Gruesome." How casually Ella can say it, and it's astonishing to Kate to hear it. The offhanded way she remarks on a thing that changed Kate forever.

"Yes. There were five bodies - two men, three women. He would cut them with a scalpel first, then a filet knife, and finally a machete. Very particular. He wanted to know how it worked."

"Know how - how what worked? Their bodies?"

"Their insides, blood and muscle and sinew. He wrote these - interesting missives from jail. His philosophy on cutting, and life and blood. I guess trying to explain."

"Explain," Ella echoes. "That's - horrifying. You _read_ his letters?"

"Oh, they weren't letters to me. Just papers from jail, things he wrote. They were found in his cell after he died."

"Was he - was it the death penalty?" Ella says, her face closed up and concerned.

"No. Just - dying in his cell, old age or - well, he was very badly wounded, and I think it affected him. I didn't much care, one way or another, Ellery."

"You didn't care?"

"After what happened-" Kate stops and rethinks her approach. "It was a high-profile case. His victims were chosen indiscriminately, and Castle and I-" She finds it strange that she can't call him _your dad_ when it's a time before she and Castle were together. And yet it's so odd to use what has become a private, intimate name between them.

"You and Dad what?" Ellery says, prompting her mother.

"We ended up being in the spotlight, a little. We were seen in press conferences standing behind my Captain - Uncle Mo."

"Oh, yeah, Uncle Mo," Ella warms, stirring on the couch, a little smile. "We went to his funeral. I remember his picture up there."

Wow. All the ways they've protected the ones precious to them; Kate's almost surprised it's lasted so long. What Ella doesn't know about Uncle Mo, or any of this, really. "Well, since Castle and I were the 'face' of the investigation, the Butcher knew us through the media coverage."

Ellery goes very still. "Knew you. _Mama_."

Kate takes a breath. "I was working a hunch. That's all it was, not even a real lead, so I went alone at the end of the day to run something down. I was poking around the warehouses near the river, just seeing if I could open any doors, trying all the locks. It was nearly dark. At one point I had to turn on my flashlight."

"Mom." Her daughter has grown up with a story-teller for a father; Ellery knows something very bad comes next.

"And I was more right than I realize. He was there; I found him. I didn't even get a chance to draw my weapon. He probably saw my car, watched me, and he was lying in wait, jumped me in the back of a warehouse. When I came to, I was tied to a wooden workbench inside - and I was naked."

"Oh my God."

"He had the scalpel - that's what woke me-"

"Oh my God. Oh my-"

"And he started cutting," Kate says, trying to be calm, trying very hard not to put emotion into it, and keep her daughter calm as well.

"Mom." Ellery looks white in the darkness, sitting up straight now, no longer relaxed. "_Mom."_

"Baby, I'm not exactly a passive person, you know; I fought him. But I was tied with this kind of wire, so that every time I moved, it would cut deeper into my wrists. It nearly - took off my hand. Fought that hard."

Suddenly Ella is scrambling up on her knees right in front of Kate. She grabs her mother by the wrists, opening her arms, and Kate lets her, lets her look at scars so familiar and known that they seem strange in the moonlight. Ella is shaking.

Maybe Kate shouldn't tell this story, but-

"Mom. Here? That was - that was-"

"Yes," she says, looking at them herself. Mostly gone. How strange to connect these thin lines with what happened. "Yeah. All night of that, struggling while he cut me-"

"Oh, God," Ellery groans sinking down into the couch.

"I was fading, losing consciousness, and I think it made him lose interest in me. I stopped fighting at some point because it was - impossible really. And so I was - it really felt like the end. I was a cop, and I knew it would come on the job, so there was an element of being reconciled. It was hopeless, bleak. I had no way out, and I was bleeding so much I had these permanent black spots in my vision. He would revive me with smelling salts, or slap my face, and then he would keep going. But I wasn't so much fun for him anymore."

"Shit," Ella curses. She scrubs her hand through her hair, her eyes fixed on Kate.

"Well, yes. One way to put it. And because I was - wasn't entertaining any more - he took my phone and he texted Castle-"

"_No."_

"Yes." Kate lifts her head to see the horror washing through her daughter. It does sound worse, doesn't it? For Castle to have been through this, their soft-hearted writer. "He texted Castle to come down to the docks, pretending it was me."

"Oh, God, Daddy."


	3. Chapter 3

**All Who Wander**

* * *

_"Oh, God, Daddy."_

"Hey, Ella, sweetheart, it's okay. It's-"

"Oh, _God. _Mama, how can you be so calm?"

Kate shifts into Ellery's space, snakes her arm through her daughter's until she can claim her hand. "Hey, we're here, right? It ends well. I don't have to keep going; you don't have to hear the rest."

"Mom." Ellery stiffens. "You cannot leave it there. You _can't._"

Kate strokes the back of Ella's hand. "It was fine until then; it really was fine. As a cop, you almost expect - um - to go in the line of duty. And like I said, Castle and I had been in some really crazy stuff. Nearly froze to death, shot at, bombs. So it wasn't even - that bad, really."

"That's insane. Mom. You can't be serious. Not that _bad._"

"Well. You just put up a wall, and you block it out." Kate pauses, thinking for a moment. "Well, I'm doing it now, aren't I? Using second person. No details. No emotion. That's just how I deal. Always have. But... I think you might understand that?"

Ella has a wild look in her eyes. "How did you do it? Mom, I - just don't - what were you _thinking _that whole time while he - while he-"

"At least I'm alone in this," Kate whispers. That's the terrible truth of it. At least, if she was dying alone, it meant Castle wasn't dying. "Thankful there was only me, but at the same time. It was so - I was the only one I could rely on. I had to save myself. But the wire - I was bleeding so badly - I realized I wasn't. I wasn't going to get out of it, and it was - it was over." Kate lets out a breath. "I was going to die."

Ella doesn't even move. "But then Daddy got there," she whispers.

"Then Castle - yeah, he walked into the trap. Until that second, I was handling it. But seeing him, backlit by the morning sun-" She closes her eyes and breathes in, seeing it again. "That was the worst moment of my life. When he came. For me. Because of me."

Ellery clings to her hand. "Of _course_ he did. Dad will always-"

"I didn't want him to see me like that," Kate cuts in. There's something about sharing this story, after so long over and done, that makes it visceral to her again. Gives it life. "I knew what happened next, what it - what that death was going to be like. The guy was only at the filet knife, and there was Castle walking in on it, and it would be him n-next. I thought-"

Ellery is squeezing her hand so tightly that Kate's fingers are going numb. It's surreal, her daughter on the couch beside her, but the memory as vivid as if it were yesterday.

"It would be him next," she admits. "Castle cut - cut up like this. And the only thing I could do, my only thought, was_ I have to keep living._ Because he had a family; someone would notice he was gone. His family would - his daughter, Alexis, would miss him."

"Allie. Allie would-"

"And his mother lived with him, your Gram. They would miss him and they'd look for him. So that was my plan - the only shot he had was me. I had to die as slowly as possible so that Castle would live. I would have to buy him time."

"Oh, God." Ella's mouth drops open.

Kate swipes at her eyes, surprised to find wetness on her cheeks. She's crying. Maybe it's the sound of Ella's voice in the darkness, so horrified. She forgets sometimes how much horror she and Castle faced together, how awful it has been. How her nightmares were a blur of jumbled pieces of real life for so long, waking alone in her bed.

"Mom. What - what happened then? Did he hurt Daddy?"

"Well, your dad - Castle was jumped. I watched as he was chained with my own handcuffs and strung up on a boathook. He came to pretty quickly, and he saw me, and it was - God, yeah, it was really bad. I couldn't look at his face while the Butcher cut me, because he was so - his heart was - breaking - in his eyes. He was in love with me and I hadn't known or at least not seriously - and that was such an awful - that was grief too. To know he loved me and he was going to have to watch me die."

"Oh, God. How could..." Ellery falls mute. She's fiddling with her engagement ring - Kate's old ring - and Kate knows she's thinking about how that would feel. Watch the person you love-

Time to move on; keep going. No need to dwell on it. "Well, Castle struggled, of course, tried to get free, but it was hopeless. I just held on to the plan. If I could bleed slowly, if I could die slowly, then he would make it long enough for his Mother and Alexis to raise the alarm, and track his phone or-"

"That's - Mama. That's..."

"Dramatic, I know. As melodramatic as your father. Well. It was only the filet knife then, and I could last that, I knew. I could give the Butcher a show, and keep it interesting for as long as it took for Castle to be missed. Castle mattered. He mattered. But then the machete-"

Ellery gives a ragged curse and Kate stops talking, tries to find words that aren't as terrible as they are. But there aren't any easier words; she's already doing it as bluntly as she can. Sparse. And to stop now might be worse.

"Well, we both knew what the machete meant. We'd seen the pictures. Castle lost it - he went crazy. He dislocated both thumbs, sprained both shoulders ripping out of those handcuffs. He just - ripped right out of them." Kate finds herself lost for a moment, the impossibility of him. She shakes her head. "He tackled the guy, and they fought for the machete. Castle got a scalpel in his forearm, fending it off. He stabbed Castle in the leg with the filet knife, but Castle got a hand on the machete and - and he - brought it down into the side of the Butcher's head."

"Daddy?"

"Yes," she says quietly. Maybe this was the wrong way to say it. "It didn't kill him. Dad didn't-"

Okay, this is a hot mess. Kate rubs at her forehead and tries to find the point again.

"He came for me," she says finally. Determined. "Castle was always going to come for me."

"Of _course _he was, he is," Ella insists. She's shivering; Kate can feel it through their tangled arms, the tremors of her daughter's body. "Dad always - he would - always-"

Kate gives a soft sigh. "Ella, sweetheart, that's a certainty I never had before in my whole life. My mom's murder and - I don't know, my own personality - nothing ever felt certain like that. Nothing ever made me believe that love would keep its promises. Not for my sake."

"And it does now, right?" Ella whispers. "It does now. You believe it."

"Yes, it does, I do. And I'm telling you this story because I want you to learn from my mistakes, my - issues, the walls I had. I know that I did this to you somehow, genetics or learned behavior, how to set yourself away from people. How to feel abandoned."

"Mama, I don't-"

But Ellery stops herself when Kate doesn't. "You see, cricket?" Kate lifts her hand and strokes her daughter's hair once more. "You see why it matters? People love you, and they will follow you into hell itself no matter how hard you push them away."

Ella nods, wordless, and then she cants into Kate and there are tears against her neck, but that's okay because Kate realizes she's crying too. She combs her fingers through her daughter's hair, soothing her, soothing them both. She's run out of words; she can only hope her daughter feels how alike they are, and in that, hope for the future.

There's a long moment where Kate knows her daughter is trying to hide it, pull herself together, but she doesn't duck Kate's touch. She goes still and then lets out a long breath.

"When I was little, I used to lay down in your lap in church and press my cheek to your scars," Ella whispers. "I didn't know what happened but I remember a story about you being hurt, something like that, that you were hurt and those scars always made me sad. I would make up stories about it, and I would put my head down in your lap and imagine I was pressing my clean skin to your hurt skin, that I could heal you like Jesus - I don't know, there was a lot of church, and it made me morbid. I just - wanted to heal you from having to die for me."

Kate's heart trips; she wraps Ellery tighter in her arms with her whole body. "But I would gladly, baby. I would die for you, sweetheart, a hundred deaths, and then die more slowly to buy you time."

"_God_."

"I don't know," she whispers, honestly. Because she doesn't, not even now. There's a sense of the miraculous when it comes to this life she's managed, and maybe that's what she knows. "I don't know about God, but I know this. The stories of my life. I want you to know it too."

"I - I think I know. I do." Ella curls her fingers over Kate's wrists, brings them to her lips, a kiss along the scars. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't be. Not at all. I got your dad for it," she says, simply. And that's an answer too. She _does_ know. "He was persistent. He loved me even when I was difficult and hard to live with. He chased after me, ran me down. He wouldn't let me wall myself off. And when I opened my eyes, I saw how the world really was and not how grief made it feel. How loneliness made it feel. It hasn't been bleak since that day."

"I don't feel alone," Ella whispers. "I just sometimes - sometimes it's like no one knows me, they can't really know me, and I'm cut off from all of you, just - there's only me."

"No, sweetheart." She continues to comb Ellery's hair, laying it over her neck and shoulders. "You're not cut off, baby. You're mine, and I bled and cried and sweat to get right here, for you, died a few times over, for you. And I'd do it again."

* * *

Kate startles at the feel of a hand on the back of her neck, opens her eyes to find Castle standing over them. He tilts his head and gestures to Ellery, who has fallen asleep lying practically on top of Kate.

She gives a little shrug and Castle leans in to brush the hair back from Ella's face. As she always has, Ellery sleeps right through the touch, not even a stir, and it makes them both smile.

Castle sinks down to the couch beside her, and Kate automatically shifts her weight into him. It's easy to do, the dance familiar: Castle pushes deeper into the corner of the couch and she ducks a shoulder to allow his arm to come around her. Familiar, routine, but still so nice, the comfort of bodies well-known to each other.

Ella is laid along her side, half in her lap, still asleep. Her husband tightens his arm and kisses the top of her head.

"You don't have to stay out here," Kate whispers.

"But you won't leave her, will you?"

Kate shakes her head. No. Won't leave Ella to wake alone, just as she didn't leave Dashiell to haunt the morning hours all by his lonesome.

"You know she could sleep out here for _hours_," Castle murmurs in her ear. "Both our backs will not be happy with us."

"I know," she sighs. She won't leave Ellery. Words are meaningless if she turns around and abandons her daughter just for a soft mattress.

He doesn't remonstrate, simply settles in behind her, digging in for the duration. She strokes her fingers up and down his arm, the pattern of soft blonde hair with a few wiry ones, now that they're older. She likes those sudden greys, the way they pepper the landscape of his skin.

Castle touches his chin to the top of her shoulder, knocks his cheek into hers. "What's this all about?" he says. His chest rumbles at Kate's back.

She gives his own cheek a little pressure in response, and she hugs Ella awkwardly, gripping a shoulder and elbow. "Confessional. Cold feet. A chance to explain."

"Hm, okay."

Kate realizes she's doing it too, what Ella does, what Kate taught her from years of ingrained habit: _find me; if you love me, keep digging._ Kate did that to Rick, made him chase after her for every last scrap of knowledge or hint of affection, even sometimes into their married life.

But Castle is used to it, and good at it, and he follows up before Kate can amend her statement. "Looks like it was something of a tear-fest. As far as Beckett women do tear-fests."

Kate chuckles softly and turns her head to give him a look for that, but she appreciates his easy humor, the lack of resentment for all the work she's made him do. "I told her about the Butcher."

Castle lifts an eyebrow.

She reaches back and pats his cheek, lovingly, a little patronizing too, but that's old habit as well. "There were some tears. But I think we were both crying over you, my tender-hearted writer."

Castle scoffs, but he nudges a kiss down to her neck. "You had the brunt of it, the worst of it, that whole night. No tears for me. I just wrenched my shoulders."

"And thumbs, and got stabbed, and had to do the work of rescuing me." She turns her lips into the stubbled cheek right next to her face, nuzzles in. "My hero."

And that's not at all patronizing; it never is. Just the truth.

He gruffs back at her, but she can feel him melting, growing soft and warm and puppy-like behind her. A miniature dog-pile on a couch that has seen its share, though usually with grandkids. It's a relatively new couch, and they bought it to accommodate all of Allie's girls. Only right that Ella is here now.

"Why did Ellery ask about-"

"No, she didn't ask; I told her. I brought it up. I was trying to explain a few things. Ella said she's turned back into a little magpie for love of him."

"For love of - Nick? Jeez, woman, the way you phrase things sometimes."

"Your fault. Ella said your melodrama has rubbed off on me." She laughs softly, twists her torso in his arms to find relief for that twinge in her back that travels along her ribs. "She's taking his stuff," Kate elucidates. "A sweatshirt, a leather necklace, probably other things too."

"Why did you say for love of him?"

"She did it to us, for attention, to put herself in front of us. She just - doesn't want to be left behind, and I know that feeling, and so I was trying to explain how - how love - I don't know. I don't know how to explain it."

"Then you guys didn't get very far, did you?"

"Don't be a punk," Kate mutters, elbowing him. "I told her about the Butcher because that was the time I knew - that was when it was just so evident how very much _with_ me you were. You showed up and you fought impossible odds and it was like an epic hero's tale, really, and there was no way I was going to ever be able to be alone again."

Castle growls something in his chest, two of his fingers stroking down to her elbow. "You started off so well, Kate, so complimentary, and then it just devolved. Never get to be alone again. Like that's a _bad_ thing."

Kate smiles. "It was to me. Still can be. You don't do well with quiet, Rick Castle."

"And who does? It's unnatural." He gives a patently false shiver behind her, and Kate shifts to nestle her head back into that perfect slope of his neck and shoulder.

She sighs and matches her breathing to his. "For someone like me, and Ella too, keeping to yourself, being alone, it's our natural state. Default setting. That doesn't mean we don't need people. And I think - back then - I spent so long keeping it to myself, all of it - my mom's murder, my anger and grief, my heart - that I was good at ignoring... well, you."

"You weren't _that_ good at ignoring me. And this is all old news, Beckett. Explain why Ellery stealing things from Nick is the same as you."

"You guys are _loud_," Ellery grumbles from Kate's arms. She shifts and turns to glare balefully, but it's ruined by the blur in her eyes and the hair sticking up from where she fell asleep pressed against Kate. "And I didn't steal from him. I just-"

Kate tugs on the end of Ella's hair and the girl huffs and falls back against Kate.

"No, you're right. I'm taking his stuff. Have been. Since we _met_. He was annoying and I did it to mess with him, like I was pulling a prank." She curls on her side and glances up at her father, and it strikes Kate again how grown up their daughter is, how she's not a five year old on the couch, pouting for getting in trouble.

"Ella, I was trying to explain - well, us - to Dad."

"Dad already knows," Ellery mutters. "Besides, I take stuff because I want - want - I don't know. Something."

"Want us to notice," Castle says promptly. "Want us to chase after you. _Oh_. I get it now. Yeah, I chased your mom pretty hard."

"Annoyingly so," Kate interjects, winking at Ella.

"Hey, now. It worked."

"It worked." She lifts her arm and strokes through the hair at his nape, hugging his face against her. "And I love you for it. And Ella loves Nick for it too." She turns to Ellery. "Do you know how - relieved I am? Overjoyed for you, Ellery, that you have what we have. That love."

"Ew, let's not go there, okay?" Castle shudders theatrically. "Also, everyone back to their own beds."

"Back to Nick's bed?" Ella says with a little smirk.

"I said _no_," Castle glares.

Kate just presses her lips into a line, trying not to laugh and encourage them both. She leans in and kisses Ellery's cheek, moves to stand from the couch. "Did it help, though, Ella? Did I help at all?"

"Yeah, Mama. You always do," she sighs, standing up and wrapping her arms around Kate's neck. "_Volim te, Mama_."

She smiles into the embrace, murmurs the words of love back to her daughter.

Castle tugs her away for his own turn, a hearty embrace that lifts Ellery off her feet with a giggle she hasn't had in years.

It helps to know, Kate thinks. It will help Ellery to understand herself, to see her mom and dad and where she gets your own issues, quirks, foibles, and even her strength of character, her determination to be noticed by the people she loves.

"Love you guys," Ella mumbles. "And Daddy, thanks for saving my mom's life."

Castle stumbles back, looking a little stunned. His mouth opens but no words come out.

Kate smiles and takes his hand, lacing their fingers in a way they rarely do any longer. Like they did when this was new and strange and awkward, but so right, so very good that Kate couldn't keep away, even when she thought she was ruining their lives with it.

_He's always going to come for me. I'm going to get him killed._

But she didn't. They were stronger than all of it. Love was stronger than ever her scarred heart.

"Back to bed, Castle," she says quietly. "We all should sleep."

* * *

.


End file.
